As You Knit
by olgatheodora
Summary: Surely there were knitters somewhere in the fleet.


AN: This story was one of the first I wrote for Battlestar Galactica, way back in season two. It remains one of my favorites.

_We wear fiber and we are closer to fiber than almost anything else. It's our diapers- and our shrouds._

_ -Lenore Tawney_

"As you knit, so shall you rip," the older woman muttered to herself, frogging an entire twenty rows of her ongoing project. "Frakking acrylic with its frakking plastic feel that makes my hands sweat…"

Gods, what Lia wouldn't give for a room full of merino roving and a spindle. She'd toss this acrylic junk out the airlock in a heartbeat.

But no, no, that wasn't a good frame of mind. She dropped her knitting onto her lap and rubbed her forehead wearily, closing her eyes against the dim lighting in the small room she had been stuck in months ago. Really, she was blessed: she had a private enough living space, even if it was the size of a closet and had lighting problems. She had yarn, even if it was acrylic, which she hated more than life itself. And she had her health, which was more than she could say for the poor president.

And, while on the subject of the president, she reopened her eyes to glare at her knitting. "Couldn't you turn into some nice cashmere? Some silk blend? Nettles? Anything would be better than frakking acrylic."

The cause of her ire lay in the fact that Lia was a yarn snob, and after the destruction of Caprica, had found herself in a yarn snob's hell: no natural fibers to be had. The only reason she had acrylic was because on the day of the attack, she had been knitting a sweater for young niece, who had begged, pleaded, and downright insisted on acrylic.

Josie wouldn't be getting her sweater now, of course. Lia quickly dashed away a few tears, and turned back to the problem at hand. The yarn- and any yarn was better than no yarn, although she sometimes had trouble convincing herself of that- was now destined for the president, who Lia didn't know in the slightest, but liked immensely. It took a special kind of woman to assume the presidency during a time of crisis, especially when the woman in question was going through a personal crisis of her own. And, way up on her pedestal, as she was, who would comfort the president as her own body betrayed her?

The only surefire way Lia knew how to give comfort was through knitting. So that was why she sat in her room, at the end of every long day, and added row upon row to the cozy sweater she was trying to fashion. The rhythm and familiarity would help her; perhaps the added warmth would help Laura Roslin.

* * *

Like so many other things, the trouble within the fleet began with Kara Thrace. To be specific, the trouble began with a discovery made by Kara Thrace: the most frakking ugly floor covering in the universe, lying innocently on the floor of the fleet's mess hall in Galactica. Puzzled, she took a few steps closer, ignoring the odd looks some of her fellow soldiers gave her, and bent to examine it more closely.

Some sort of plastic, she thought. Woven? Knitted? She didn't have a clue about such things; no one in her family had been the crafty type. Whatever it was, it was ugly. And it was standing in her way like an impertinent recruit, adding to the already unattractive room.

She straightened, nudged it with her toe, and considered air locking it. Would anyone care if she tossed it out the airlock? There was a no littering policy, but the president tossed far more pesky things than this out of it all the time. Surely they would grant her amnesty.

Maybe she'd let the higher officers catch glimpse of it first so that they'd know exactly what kind of evil they were dealing with.

"Starbuck."

She snapped to attention as the Admiral came up behind her, pulling her arm in quickly to salute. "Sir."

"At ease." He gave the plastic monster a long stare, and then turned his gaze on her. "Where did that come from?"

"Haven't a clue, sir. Found it in here this morning."

He gave it another look- one that told her he found it odd, and very ugly- but apparently he did not consider those factors a reason for consigning it to space. "If you find out who left it there, give them something better to do with their hands," he told her, ostensibly ignoring any possibility that her first thoughts at this statement might be from the gutter.

"Sir?"

"Hand knitted." He gestured toward the beast, and shrugged. "My grandmother used to knit."

"Ah. Yes, sir."

And that, as they say, was that. The Admiral strode off in search of coffee, and Starbuck was left eyeing her newfound foe malevolently.

Yes, she thought. The knitter would pay.

* * *

Lia wasn't the only knitter amongst the populace. There were others, some aware of their nearest knitting neighbors and some cast into seeming exile among yarn-less civilians. Those searching for other knitters had, over time, been reduced to some very interesting tactics- one determined young woman had simply scrawled "I KNIT" onto the back of a shirt, and within several hours of first donning her declaration another knitter had nearly tackled her to the ground in a fit of jubilance (afterwards, having declared eternal friendship and sworn an oath of blood sisterhood, they had compared yarn stashes).

The pockets of knitters who did find each other formed knitting guilds, taking over public spaces and salvaging whatever materials they could for their craft. This included shredded plastic, a material that was plentiful in the areas of the fleet more commonly associated with the army than civilians. It was, in fact, a group of similarly inclined pilots who first discovered this use of the plastic tarps that had been destined for scrap. These pilots shredded the stubborn material in their free time, gradually moving from randomly torn chunky strips to finer, more double knit and worsted weight plastic yarn. They organized a sort of co-op with the other guilds, exchanging their nearly bullet proof wares with the rarer, softer yarns- acrylic, mainly, which seemed to be in near abundance, and occasionally the odd ball of merino or rougher wool. Very occasionally, a ball of luxury fiber came to them. This was not knitted, but kept safely locked away, only brought out and fondled lovingly during group meetings.

"On Earth-" they would say with a wistful sigh as they stroked the cashmere or mohair or alpaca, going into long spiels of the animals they would find and the settlements they would found on the basis of yarn-craft alone.

On a daily basis, almost all of the groups restrained themselves to knitting only the plastic strips or the occasional ball of acrylic. It was only for special projects- a hat for a newly born baby, or a shawl for an ailing woman- that they would pull out the yearned for natural fiber, taking turns after several rows so that each knitter could once again experience the sensual pleasure of wool sliding through his or her fingers.

So, it really wasn't that surprising that, after the news of President Roslin's cancer became public knowledge, every single knitter and knitting guild decided that whatever they had was the least that they could give her.

Even if it meant knitting up the last ball of cashmere/silk blend left in the universe.

* * *

Between running the government and arguing with the quorum, Laura Roslin was not in the mood for much of anything other than dinner, a good book, and a night of uninterrupted sleep. She knew from experience that she would not get much of the latter, but at least once in bed she would be alone for a long stretch of hours. Upon entering her quarters and dropping a stack of paperwork onto her desk, she noticed a small bundle placed neatly on her chair. She knew her staff well enough to feel safe opening the bundle without calling her security detail in; after all, any packages had to go through an extensive screening process before actually reaching her or her quarters.

She unfolded the small expanse of brown paper, and something wispy slid off the recycled fiber and landed with a soft flutter at her feet. Bending to pick it up was almost more than she could handle, as the room was inclined to pitch about wildly whenever she strained her center of balance, but as soon as she had straightened and examined the object she found herself forgetting her physical discomfort.

Gods, she hadn't seen merino and mohair this fine since before the holocaust. Unfolded, the supposedly small bundle of cloth expanded into a carefully worked lace shawl, the kind her grandmother had been accustomed to knitting and wearing. Her mother had kept one of her own mother's making with her throughout the entirety of her cancer, and Laura had lovingly put it away amidst other relics of her family- lost now, of course.

And yet, here in her hands, a shawl as seemingly delicate as cobwebs. It was enough to bring her to tears.

* * *

After her first encounter with the floor mat of doom, Starbuck found herself spotting the damn things all over the place. She had yet to find the knitter- she didn't drink with the fleet, at least- but every time Kara inadvertently stepped on one of the frakking things she found herself tumbling to the ground.

Plastic, it seemed, was a very slippery material when woven, especially when placed against metal flooring.

In a way, her tumbles and new bruises inspired what happened next. After having just a few more drinks than was probably smart, she and several other comrades were headed back to their respective quarters, being loud and characteristically brash. Starbuck, mid lewd comment, suddenly found herself pitched down the corridor, trying desperately to keep her balance on the rocketing mat and eventually crashing against a wall.

She sat up dizzily. "That was frakking awesome," she declared, and thus a new sport was born.

And the next morning, despite her colorful patches of bruises, Starbuck found herself thinking that she might let the knitter live after all.

* * *

The knitting guild within the fleet itself found this new development hysterically funny, and began amassing a collection of pictures that captured the event in action. Before the birth of this new sport, they had been a rather sober group- just like the rest of the fleet, they lost their comrades in arms and in yarn on a regular basis, so their numbers dwindled, gradually. These knitters knew their own mortality, and each time they entered a Raptor or returned to find one of their own guild missing, they each thought, _me next_. Sometimes they were right. Sometimes they were wrong, and it was the woman who had just mastered intarsia, or the man who first wove a lace motif using plastic fiber, instead.

And because they knew their own death approached, and because they did not wish to have their guild die out and, thus, leave their precious stash of luxury yarn to molder in cabinets, they eventually cast on for their last great projects.

And as they chuckled over the latest developments in mat surfing (including, but not limited to, the spread of the activity to other ships and the institution of rules for proper play), or mourned over the loss of one from within the guild itself, they knitted a legacy between them, often taking up where a fallen comrade would leave off. A small doll for the little girl down the hall, who lost her mother to a Cylon missile. A shawl for the grieving mother of a dead comrade. A sweater for their dying president.

One observant young woman, noting the way the Admiral's eyes followed the president's frail form with a mixture of sadness and longing, cast on for a scarf with a small pile of chunky merino. Knit after knit, she let the simple garter stitch flow through her fingers like a prayer. When she died, half finished, her best friend finished the project for her. After casting off the final stitches and weaving in the ends, she personally presented it to Admiral Adama in the privacy of his office, telling him that it was a gift from the fleet.

She died a week later. Afterwards, William Adama placed the strip of knitted material on his desk, often finding himself running his fingers over the stitches in a meditative act that echoed the making.

Like he had told Starbuck, his grandmother had been a knitter, and her mother before her, and so on down the line. She had made him mittens when he was a boy, scarves with cabled patterns, sweaters out of rough, indestructible handspun wool. He was well aware of the comfort a hand knit gift hoped to impart, and that was why when Laura Roslin began wearing soft shawls and new sweaters within her own quarters, he refrained from comment. She wore the physical manifestation of her people's devotion, and as she grew worse and worse he was glad of it.

When their relationship changed from friendship to something more- something that he recognized as love, but did not name as such- the few nights they spent together were regrettably chaste, as that was all her physical state could handle. The cashmere and silk of her new garments felt as soft as her skin, though the fibers snagged on the calluses which covered his hands. When he slept with her at night, she often kept one of the sturdier shawls clutched in her hands, unconsciously stroking the material in her sleep.

One in particular was her favorite, made of cashmere and mostly plain stockinette, with edging like seraphic feathers, and as she grew weaker, she kept this one with her more often. It smelled faintly of her scent, and he resolved that when the inevitable happened, he would take it back to his quarters and place it with the gift that had been given to him.

_As you knit, you shall also rip_, he remember his grandmother telling him, needles in hand, the words taking on a more bittersweet meaning as he watched Laura fight to preserve humanity while being destroyed herself.

She shifted against him in her sleep, pain knitting her brows and her hands clenching around the soft bundle she held, and he soothed her with a wordless murmur.

"_I'm glad it's you," _she had told him earlier as he helped her into bed. _"You won't fall apart, afterwards."_ She had given him a serious, somewhat worried look. _"Promise me."_

He had, though he knew himself well enough to know that he would soldier on, with or without her promise. And although he ached with the knowledge that minute-by-minute, her life slipped further away from both of them, the ache was tempered- slightly, slightly- by the stitches, smooth and whole, that covered her wasting limbs.

The stitches slid like a wandering prayer beneath his hands, catching on his rough disbelief and soothing his mortality.

1/1


End file.
